Failing Health Care Co-ops Will Cost Taxpayers

Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Programs (COOPs) were really a political compromise between Members of Congress who wanted a public plan option and those who didn’t. Once the Affordable Care Act passed, COOPs had outlived their usefulness. However, they are now failing and will cost taxpayers plenty. Senior Fellow Devon Herrick testified before a congressional committee.

Notes

Until a recent Supreme Court decision, the ESA also required all federal agencies, and recipients of federal funds or permits, to ensure that their actions did not harm threatened or endangered species, even if, in order to prevent harm to a species, they were unable to carry out their primary responsibilities under other laws. See National Association of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife (2007) 551 U.S. 340; Environmental Protection Agency v. Defenders of Wildlife (2007) 551 U.S. 549.

Members of Congress “professed not to understand at the time of passage that this law might raise questions about irrigation projects, timber harvests, the dredging of ports, or the generation of electricity.” See Lynn A. Greenwalt, “Reflections on the Power and Potential of the Endangered Species Act,” Endangered Species Update, Vol. 5, No. 10, August 1988, page 7.

TVA v. Hill (1978) 437 U.S. 153.

“Endangered Species Act: Information on Species Protection on Nonfederal Lands,” United States General Accounting Office, GAO/RCED-95-16, 1994.

Michael Bean, “Ecosystem Approaches to Fish and Wildlife Conservation: ‘Rediscovering the Land Ethic,'” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Training and Education Seminar Series, Arlington, Va., November 3, 1994.

Benjamin Cone, Jr., Prepared Statement, Hearing before the Committee on Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, Task Force on Private Property Rights, June 13, 1995, Washington, D.C.

Dean Leuck and Jeffrey A. Michael, “Preemptive Habitat Destruction Under the Endangered Species Act,” Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 46, No. 1, December 2003.

“Recovery Plan for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis),” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Second Revision, January 2003. Available at http://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plans/2003/030320.pdf.

Glenn E. Crellin, “Assessment of Endangered Species Act Enforcement on Real Property Values: A Case Study of Three Washington Counties,” National Association of Realtors, 2002.

The habitat for the vireo is 33,685,760 acres and for the warbler is 22,020,480 acres. “Black-capped Vireo Recovery Plan,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1991; “Golden-cheeked Warbler Recovery Plan,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1992.

Margaret Rector, testimony before the Committee on Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, Oversight Hearing on the Implementation of the Endangered Species Act, March 20, 1995.

The negative impacts of the ESA in the Hill Country have been observed by federal and state experts. For example, Sam Hamilton, then FWS administrator for Texas, said, “The incentives are wrong here. If I have a rare metal on my property, its value goes up. But if a rare bird occupies the land, its value disappears.” See Betsy Carpenter, “The Best Laid Plans,” U.S. News and World Report, Vol. 115, No. 13, October 1993, page 89. Hamilton's 1993 observation was ironic, given that his aggressive implementation of the ESA helped create the very conditions he decried. The effects of Hamilton's approach were apparent not only in decreased land values but also habitat destruction. One of the foremost authorities on the ESA in Texas, Larry McKinney, Director of Resource Protection for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said, “I am convinced that more habitat for the black-capped vireo, and especially the golden-cheeked warbler, has been lost in those areas of Texas since the listing of these birds than would have been lost without the ESA at all.” See Larry McKinney, “Reauthorizing the Endangered Species Act: Incentives for Rural Landowners,” in Wendy Hudson, ed., Building Economic Incentives Into the Endangered Species Act (Washington, D.C.: Defenders of Wildlife, May 1994), page 74.

David Tschetter, “The Abuses of the Endangered Species Act: The So-Called Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse,” testimony before the Committee on Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, September 18, 2006.

David G. Cameron, “Endangered Species Act of the Committee on Resources,” hearing before the Task Force on the House of Representatives, May 25, 1995: “My recollections of the horror stories abundant in stockmen's journals about the hazards of hosting an endangered species didn't help, and I sadly bowed out,” Cameron stated. “It seemed a good deed would probably be punished.” Cameron's reactions are widely shared in rural areas, where word of mouth and publications such as agricultural periodicals are important means by which people obtain news. “How many times has my story been repeated?” Cameron asked while testifying before Congress. “How often has the ESA impeded biological restoration?...Reasonable property owners are frightened and angry at you, the government, for managing with brick bats.”

Although the rate of species extinction worldwide has greatly accelerated, the rate of increase has been much greater in the tropics, where most species exist, than in temperate regions such as the United States. (Russell A. Mittermeier et al., Hotspots Revisited: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)).

National Wildlife Federation, “Endangered Species Act: Myths and Facts,” 2006. Available at http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/pdfs/esamythsfacts.pdf.

The 1988 ESA amendments require the FWS to report to Congress biennially on the status of species listed under the Act. The FWS's survey consists of four questions: a) What is the species' population trend (increasing, decreasing, stable, unknown)? b) Is the species being propagated in captivity? c) Has the species' recovery priority status changed? and d) What percentage of recovery goals have been achieved?

Technically, only 18 species have been claimed as recovered. The FWS lists 46 species as delisted because they count the grey wolf in the Upper Midwest twice, once in Minnesota and once for what the agency refers to as the “Western Great Lakes DPS (Distinct Population Segment).” This was done for regulatory purposes, not because two separate species, or populations, were delisted. So the two should be combined, thus bringing the total to 45 species.

Delisted (40 Federal Register 44412-44429, 9/26/75) but as a technicality retained as Threatened by Similarity of Appearance, in Cameron, Vermillion and Calcasieu Parishes in LA due to sufficient population sizes; Downlisted (42 Federal Register 2071-2076, 1/10/77) in FL and certain coastal areas of GA, LA, SC, TX, from endangered to the less imperiled status of threatened; Delisted (44 Federal Register 37170-037172, 6/25/79) but as a technicality retained as Threatened by Similarity of Appearance, in 9 Louisiana Parishes; Iberia, St. Mary, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Charles, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and St. Tammany; Delisted (46 Federal Register 40664-40669, 8/10/81), but as a technicality retained as Threatened by Similarity of Appearance, in the rest of Louisiana, 52 Parishes, where the alligator was still classified as Endangered or Threatened; Delisted (48 Federal Register 46332-46336, 10/12/83, but as a technicality retained as Threatened due to Similarity of Appearance, in Texas; Delisted (50 FR 25672-25678, 6/20/85), but as a technicality retained as Threatened due to Similarity of Appearance, in Florida. Delisted (52 FR 21059-21064m 6/4/87) but as a technicality retained as Threatened due to Similarity of Appearance throughout the remainder of its range—AL, AR, GA, MS, NC, SC, OK.

The claim “is quite phenomenal when one considers the age of sexual maturity is 10 years,” according to Ted Joanen and Larry McNease, then biologists with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and two of the foremost experts on the biology and conservation of the alligator. “The original estimate used to justify the alligator being on the endangered species list must have been grossly underestimated” (Ted Joanen and Larry McNease, “American Alligator Management in Louisiana and Federal Regulations,” Third Annual SSAR Regional Herpetological Societies Conference, Knoxville, Tenn., August 12, 1979).

According to Tommy C. Hines, “The Lacy Act was amended in 1969 and in force by January 1970. This amendment provided conservation agencies with a law to control interstate movement of alligator hides for the first time. During 1970 movement of alligator hides out of Florida was reduced and by 1971 virtually stopped.” See Tommy C. Hines, “The Past and Present Status of the Alligator in Florida,” Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Vol. 33, pages 224-232. As Ted Joanen and Larry McNease of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries stated about the Lacy Act amendment: “This is probably the most important piece of wildlife legislation implemented in modern times. It opened up new areas of law enforcement and in general, bridged the gap between state and federal alligator protection efforts. The State of Louisiana supported, and was the catalyst for amending the Lacy Act to cover alligators as a means of providing protection for these reptiles.” See Ted Joanen and Larry McNease, “American Alligator Management in Louisiana and Federal Regulations,” paper presented at the Third Annual SSAR Regional Herpetological Societies Conference, Knoxville, Tenn., August 12, 1979, page 4.

Tim Thwaites, David Mussred, Steven Dickman and Rex Graham, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Kangaroos,” International Wildlife, Vol. 27, No. 5, 1997, page 39. “The international response to this [large-scale commercial] killing [of 1-3 million kangaroos per year] — campaigns in North America and Europe to place kangaroos on various list of endangered species — never ceases to puzzle Australians,” notes the National Wildlife Federation. “They know that a combination of the provision of well water for livestock in Australia's arid outback and the removal of dingos [wild dogs] has increased kangaroo numbers. Although ‘roo numbers vary greatly depending on rainfall, the long-term average population of reds and greys is about 20 million. And most marsupial biologists agree that figure is as high as it has ever been.”

According to Cade and Burnham, founder and former president, respectively, of the Peregrine Fund, and two of the foremost experts on the falcon's conservation, “[P]rotection by the ESA for the Peregrine provided no measurable benefit to recovery of the species and [the Act] was a regular, if not constant, obstacle because of its emphasis on law enforcement and permitting,” William Burnham and Tom Cade, Return of the Peregrine (Boise, Idaho: The Peregrine Fund), October 2003, page 277.

Ibid. Katy McGinty, chair of the President's Council on Environmental Quality during the Clinton Administration, hailed the HCP as, “a new way of doing business . . . saying yes to partnerships and to progress.”

David Western, Samantha Russell and Kamweti Mutu, “The Status of Wildlife in Kenya's Protected and Non-Protected Areas,” a paper commissioned by Kenya's Wildlife Policy Review Team and presented at the First Stateholders Symposium of the Wildlife Policy and Legislation Review, African Conservation Center, Nairobi, Kenya, September 27-28, 2006. Available at http://www.conservationafrica.org/conservation-publications/wildlife_poicy_review_paper.pdf.

Stephen R. Edwards, “Sustainable Conservation By and For the People,” in Richard Littell, ed., Endangered and Other Protected Species: Federal Law and Regulation (Washington, D.C.: BNA Books, 1992), pages vii-viii.

The ESA is “widely regarded as a model to which the world aspires,” claims Michael Bean of Environmental Defense; see Anon., “Endangered Species Act Faces Tough Test in Reauthorization, EDF Official Says,” BNA Environmental Law Update, March 5, 1992. Bean has repeatedly made this claim: “The Endangered Species Act is a very significant piece of legislation, a model for the rest of the world;” see Hugh Dellios, “Environmental act endangered as private landowners cry foul,” Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1995. “The Act's effectiveness is admired by conservation officials in countries around the world;” see Michael J. Bean “Endangered Species Act Reform Rhetoric and Reality,” EDF Letter, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1994, page 4. “In enacting ESA, the United States sent a strong message to the world by putting our nation on the forefront of protecting wildlife,” claimed U.S. Rep. John Dingell, who voted for the ESA in 1973; see John Dingell, “GOP Moves Imperil Dynamic, Flexible, Common-Sense law,” Rocky Mountain News, December 27, 2003.